Hi there and welcome to The Forgotten Borough.
This site is primarily for my students. I’m a high school teacher with three different courses which I give a short description of below. I hope to use this site to post all sorts of material online for my students. From homework assignment sheets (that they are always losing!) to podcasts that will provide some extra review material for their exams. In addition to all that, I come across all sorts of stuff from books I read, television I watch, web pages and news sources I see that I want to be able to share. This site provides the perfect platform for doing all that.
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One of the truly great resources out there is PBS. Too many students hear the words “Channel 13″ and they cringe. They shouldn’t. Want to see what you almost never see on regular news broadcasts, watch WideAngle with Aaron Brown on Tuesday nights on, yes, channel 13 at 9:00pm.
Here’s a blurb from the show’s website:
Hi world!
Don’t be fooled by the word “geography.” This is more than about maps! Learning about the world, where people live and why they live there. This is a course about almost everything.
For my senior government classes, this is a big year…the Election, community service, etc.
The story of our nation…just for my Junior classes. Homeworks, exam information, projects, Regents review, and more…all here.
If all goes as planned, two of my five classes will be the required US History & Government courses for juniors. The class name pretty much says it all, it is the story of all of us.
This being New York State, the class ends with a Regents exam. In short, if you want a diploma, you need to pass this exam. (A note, for students who entered high school in New York in 2006 you must have a 65 or above on at least three Regents exams.) I try as much as possible not to teach for the test. There are many events in American history that will never be seen on the Regents exam, but often they are far too important and often interesting to leave out of class.
My own little area of interest is the history of technology and how it has changed life in the US and the world over the centuries. You can expect to hear me make a lot of references to such things.
Later this summer, I’ll post the homework assignments online as well as a term project of some sort. Also, I’ll try to keep people informed about television programs that will add to what we learn in class.
For the AP Human Geography class, the summer assignment is centered around Harm de Blij’s (pronounced de Bley) book, Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America- Climate Change, The Rise of China, and Global Terrorism. LIke my students should be doing, I’m in the midst of reading this book as well.